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Infectious Diseases

Mr. Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to overhaul the infectious disease services and to create new isolation units and hospitals for victims of such diseases. [107931]

Ms Blears: There is already a network of specialist infectious disease units across the country and most hospitals have single rooms suitable for isolation.

There are no immediate plans to create new specialist centres or isolation hospitals.

Mr. Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what measures are being taken to prepare (a) airports and (b) other entry points into the United Kingdom to deal with future outbreaks of infectious diseases in foreign countries; [111303]

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(2) what programmes are planned to train airport officials in recognising potentially infectious persons before they enter the country. [111304]

Ms Blears: The national health service locally is responsible for providing medical practitioners to undertake public health functions at ports, airports and railway stations handling international trains. These medical practitioners would be expected to know about relevant clinical aspects of communicable diseases as part of their normal professional learning, and the NHS would be responsible for ensuring that they are suitably equipped. Warnings of future threats from outbreaks of communicable disease in other countries and guidance on dealing with them will be cascaded through the NHS if the need arises.

Mr. Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what organisation would be responsible for co-ordinating health operations in the event of a large scale outbreak of an infectious disease in a major population centre. [111305]

Ms Blears: This aspect of the primary care trusts' accountability for control of infectious diseases is discharged by the Health Protection Agency (HPA), which is responsible for the investigation and management of suspected communicable disease incidents affecting the community, including outbreaks of infection. The HPA's responsibility includes the preparation of multi-agency contingency plans, leading and co-ordinating the public health response, undertaking appropriate epidemiological investigation, providing advice to the public and professionals and convening multi-agency incident/outbreak control teams.

The Chief Medical Officer discharges his responsibilities via the regional directors of public health, who play a key role in management of large scale incidents.

The Department's emergency plans would be brought into effect when necessary to ensure that the national health service can cope with large numbers of patients. These plans involve co-operation between all the key organisations.

Integrated Medicines

Mr. Paterson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much his Department has spent on evaluating integrated medicines in each of the past five years. [111666]

Ms Blears: The term 'integrated medicine' is usually applied generically to the use of complementary therapies to supplement orthodox treatment. At the present time, no projects have been commissioned with a specific remit to assess the interaction between a complementary therapy and an orthodox treatment. Questions of this sort can best be considered once the efficacy of individual complementary therapies, acting on their own, is better understood.

Between 1999 and 2001, the Medical Research Council spent an estimated 520,000 on such research. The Department of Health has currently awarded two

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grants at a total value of £800,000. On 21 April, I announced post-doctoral awards in complementary medicine research, totalling a further £1.3 million.

Meningitis Trust

Mr. Kidney: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what financial support his Department gives to the Meningitis Trust. [111403]

Ms Blears: The Meningitis Trust is in receipt of a grant under section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968. The grant is for three years.

In 2002–03, the award was for £20,000, in 2003–04 the award will be for £27,000 and in 2004–05 the award will be for £35,200.

The Section 64 Grant is to help finance the trust's home visiting service, which was launched last year to help people suffering from meningitis after they have been discharged from hospital.

Methadone

Ms Atherton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his Answer of 7 May 2003, Official Report, column 767W, on methadone overdose deaths, if he will make it his policy to ensure that all methadone prescriptions are taken under medical supervision. [113101]

Ms Blears: The Department of Health's 'Drug Misuse and dependence—guidelines on clinical management' (1999) states the following:

'Supervised consumption is recommended for new prescriptions for a minimum of three months, and should be relaxed only when the patient's compliance is assured. However, the need for supervised consumption should take into account the patient's social factors, such as employment and child care responsibilities. If supervised ingestion clashes with these and is still felt necessary, it must be made available at a time that allows the patient to attend without putting their job or families at risk.'

NHS Electronic Bookings

Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for Health which pilots for NHS electronic bookings have been completed; and what the outcomes of the work carried out were. [110174]

Mr. Hutton: There are 43 health communities taking forward electronic booking as part of the national booking programme; at least one in every strategic health authority. These comprise:

Five electronic booking enterprise communities: North West London, South East London, Dorset, Manchester and West Yorkshire. These were established to move electronic booking faster and act as demonstrators for the rest of the national health service. They ran from April 2002 to March 2003;


38 electronic booking shadow communities between May and November 2002. These were established to continue the development and spread of electronic booking, learning from the experience of the enterprise communities and will run until November 2003.

Work with the enterprise communities was used to inform the development of the specification for the procurement of electronic booking systems currently underway.

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An interim report on the work of the enterprise communities was published by the Modernisation Agency in November 2002, a copy of which is available in the Library. A full evaluation, reporting the progress of the enterprise communities and early findings from the shadow communities, will be published in the summer.

NHS Premises

Mrs. Calton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent advances have been made by the NHS in improving the environmental standards of NHS premises. [109649]

Mr. Hutton: The national health service has made significant advances in improving the environmental standards of NHS premises.

The NHS has met the energy efficiency target of 20 per cent. reduction in energy use from 1990 to March 2000.

Work is now underway, in concert with Action Energy and the Carbon Trust, to assist the NHS in meeting new, challenging targets of 15 per cent. energy or 0.15 million tonnes carbon efficiency from March 2000 to March 2010.

The "New Environmental Strategy for the NHS" issued in April 2002 requires the NHS to produce local strategies and plans of action against a number of key areas, including: transport, waste, water, energy/carbon, and procurement.

To assist the NHS, advice is provided in "Sustainable Development in the NHS". A software tool, the "NHS Environmental Assessment Tool", will help the NHS identify and hence seek to improve its environmental impacts. Additionally, to assist the NHS, NHS Estates is involved with:

the Government's Watermark initiative to address water conservation;


the Department of Health and Sustrans to provide seminars on healthy transport planning;


producing further guidance to address total waste management; and


promoting sustainable construction as part of the major NHS capital development programme to 2010.

NHS Treatment Abroad

Mr. Jon Owen Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients he estimates are eligible to have treatment in another EU country paid for by the NHS owing to an undue delay in treatment in England, with reference to the European Court of Justice ruling on treatment of patients abroad. [109976]

Mr. Hutton: No estimate has been made of the number of patients who may wish to seek authorisation for treatment abroad under the E112 referral arrangements.

Nationals of the European economic area resident in this country are eligible to apply for referral to another European Union country using the E112 referral scheme. Whether authorisation is granted will depend on certain conditions being met. One of these is that the treatment in question cannot be given to the patient

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"within the time normally necessary for obtaining the treatment in question in the member state of residence, taking account of his current state of health and the probable course of the disease".

It is not possible to estimate at any given point in time how many patients this might apply to. In 2002, 1,120 E112 forms were issued in respect of residents of England, Scotland and Wales.

Mr. Jon Owen Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions he has had with his counterparts in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Office concerning the right of patients to have treatment in another EU country paid for by the NHS owing to an undue delay in treatment in the UK, referred to in the European Court of Justice ruling on treatment of patients abroad. [109978]

Mr. Hutton: Following the European Court of Justice judgment in Case-C157/99 Geraets-Smits/Peerbooms, the Department reviewed the operation of the arrangements in place in the United Kingdom for referral of patients elsewhere in the European Economic Area under Regulation (EEC) 1408/71. The devolved administrations were consulted.

Mr. Jon Owen Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what efforts he has made to inform patients of their right to have treatment in another EU country paid for by the NHS if subject to undue delay in this country as stated in the European Court of Justice ruling on treatment of patients abroad; [109882]

(2) what efforts he has made to inform patients of their right to have treatment in another EU country paid for by the NHS if subject to undue delay in England, as referred to in the European Court of Justice ruling on treatment of patients abroad. [109977]

Mr. Hutton: The Department publishes the patient referral arrangements in Regulation (EEC) 1408/71 through "Health Advice for Travellers", which is widely available in post offices. Information is also available on CEEFAX, PRESTEL and the internet.

Revised guidance to the public to take account of recent rulings in the European Court of Justice on treatment of patients abroad is being finalised and will be published in the next edition of the leaflet.

Guidance to the national health service on directly commissioning treatment in other European economic area countries is also available on the Department's website.

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